Over the past few years the FBI has used all sorts of tactics to push its war on encrypted devices. The latest one is to give Congress false information about how many devices the agency can’t unlock.
The NSA lost its own war against encryption in the late ’90s, when it tried to get all manufacturers to add a “Clipper chip” to their devices so it could have access to users’ encrypted communications.
Recently, the FBI told Congress that there were 7,775 devices it couldn’t unlock in 2017 because of their encryption features. The FBI has used this fact to further advance its “Going Dark” campaign, which was an effort to teach the public and Congress that the agency can see less and less information about criminals as they increase their usage of encryption.
This misinformation campaign has some issues of its own, such as the fact that we now live in a Golden Age of Surveillance. The Golden Age of Surveillance theory states that as people use more and more internet-connected (and insecure) devices, more data about them becomes available to law enforcement. Encryption helps combat that trend.
It turns out that the FBI wasn’t telling the truth about the number of locked devices. A report from The Washington Post revealed that the number of devices the FBI can’t unlock is significantly smaller than the agency told Congress, in the range of 1,000-2,000:
The FBI has repeatedly provided grossly inflated statistics to Congress and the public about the extent of problems posed by encrypted cellphones, claiming investigators were locked out of nearly 7,800 devices connected to crimes last year when the correct number was much smaller, probably between 1,000 and 2,000.
The App Association President Morgan Reed offered the following statement in response to the news:
“Strong encryption protects Americans from criminals that seek to do us harm. We are incredibly disappointed that the FBI would mislead the American people. The FBI’s disingenuous statements put Americans at risk by driving us away from the very technology that protects our valuable data.
“Last year alone more than 15 million Americans were the victims of identity theft, and these crimes cost our nation more than $16 billion. Strong technical security methods like end-to-end encryption help prevent data from entering the wrong hands. The FBI’s willingness to distort the reality around encryption to meet a political agenda not only jeopardizes the agency’s credibility, but also our security.
“ACT | The App Association firmly believes in protecting American consumers with the strongest encryption tools available. We have been vocal on the importance of this issue before District Courts and Congress and will continue to advocate for strong encryption tools that protect our data from criminals with nefarious intent.”
The EFF has also submitted its own FOIA request to learn whether or not the FBI is telling the truth on this matter. If the FOIA request reveals that The Washington Post was correct and the FBI was not, then the law enforcement agency could suffer yet another hit to hits credibility in its war on encryption.
